After crash and coma, teen finds voice

Kassandra Cummings broke nearly six months of silence last week with a word that made her mother cry.

"The first word I wanted her to say was 'Mom.' I was truly blessed because that was the first word out of her mouth," said mother Mary Cummings-Vinnedge, 44, of Modesto. "My birthday was the 11th and that's what I wanted for it, for her to speak. I was so excited. I got on the phone and texted everybody so they could forward the news to everybody they knew."

Cummings, who graduated from Modesto High School in June, suffered severe head trauma in a car crash in Redding on Sept. 6. She was in her first week of classes as a freshman at Simpson University. After the crash, doctors put the 18-year-old into an induced coma because of swelling in her brain. In November, after three surgeries, they began easing Cummings off the medication that was keeping her in the coma.

As the drugs wore off, her daughter became more aware, said Cummings-Vinnedge. By December, doctors could tell from Cummings' eye movements that she was watching people around her when they spoke. Since Jan. 30, Cummings has been at Kaiser Permanente in Vallejo at a full-time rehabilitation center. She's taking classes six days a week to learn again how to move and speak.

On Feb. 23, in speech therapy class, Cummings-Vinnedge said she could tell that her daughter was almost ready to talk.

"You could see that she was trying to speak, moving her mouth, but no words were coming out," she said. "I knew she knew what was going on. But you know, sometimes in a group you're not comfortable."

Cummings-Vinnedge went out immediately to buy flashcards with numbers, the alphabet and pictures of animals on them. She started showing them to her daughter. She urged Cummings to speak, asking her daughter to say anything she could.

" 'I just want to hear your voice,' I told her. Her voice is there. Sometimes you just can't hear her very well," she said.

Cummings makes daily progress. On Tuesday, she was able to slide into a wheelchair on her own. She can identify pictures on flashcards and add some numbers. She picks out her friends in photographs and remembers the names of her cat, Snuggles, and dog, Nicki.

Since Cummings said "Mom" on Feb. 25, her vocabulary has been growing. On the phone, she can give one- or two-word answers when asked questions. But she struggles to put more than a few words together, her mother said. The signs are positive, but there's a long road ahead.

"It's not like flipping a switch," Cummings-Vinnedge said. "She's still waking up. Before she was speaking, she was clapping, she was 'thumbs up' to the nurses, snapping her fingers. Those were things they were training her to do. We don't know what kind of memories she has. We're not sure what kind of (mental) deficit she's going to have. She can't tie her shoes. She still requires 24-7 care. All the things that we all take for granted."

Driving to get dinner

On the evening of Sept. 6, Cummings was in her white Honda Accord with college roommate Scarlette Cortez, 17, of San Jose, authorities said. Cummings had just finished her third day of school, which she had capped off with a cheerleading meeting, her mother said. Cummings cheered through all four years of high school for the basketball and football teams.

Every night about the same time, Cummings and Cortez grabbed fast food for dinner together, Cummings-Vinnedge said.

"It was the normal route that she took, right around the corner from the college. Then she got hit," Cummings' mother said.

According to Redding police, the crash occurred at Churn Creek Road and Browning Street. Cummings was driving north on Churn Creek as William Barrett, 56, of Redding was driving east on Browning in a green Dodge Ram pickup. Cummings didn't stop at the red light and was struck by the pickup, said officer Michael Stufflebeam, a traffic specialist.

"Kids run lights accidentally all the time," he said. "The biggest problem with this was the mismatch of vehicles."

Cummings-Vinnedge described Barrett's Dodge as a lifted, four-wheel-drive truck with tractor tires, which dwarfed her daughter's compact car. The Dodge hit Cummings' Honda on the driver's side when they met in the intersection.

"His bumper landed right in the driver's window and hit her in the temple of the head," said Cummings-Vinnedge. "His left tire ran over the top of her tire and the other tire went into her door."

Cummings has told her mother she doesn't remember the crash.

"Maybe that's a blessing," Cummings-Vinnedge said. "I don't think she saw it coming."

Wanted to be a counselor

Cummings had plans to major in psychology so she could become a school counselor, her mother said.

"She is someone who just loves people. No one could say a bad thing about Kassandra," she said. "She just had a way of walking into the room shining her beautiful smile and she lit up the whole room."

Her daughter, she said, was a good listener, whom friends would call with problems.

"She would help you psychologically work through them, weigh the odds with you, the list of goods and bads," she said.

Though Cummings can't yet speak much for herself, some clues to her personality are on her MySpace page.

"I'm a Christian, which means I'm not perfect and I turn to God to guide my life," she wrote. "I refuse to play victim. 'I'm not a survivor, I'm a fighter.' And I will always be too stubborn to change that about myself."

Cummings-Vinnedge is a secretary at Connecting Waters Charter School in Waterford. Her boss, whom she calls an "angel," has let Cummings-Vinnedge work remotely from her daughter's bedside.

But despite her boss's flexibility, and even though the family has insurance, the hospital bills have been crippling. A recent notice from one of four hospitals in which Cummings has stayed totaled almost $1 million. Kaiser, Cummings-Vinnedge said, will pay only a quarter of it.

Then there are the hotel bills.

"After six months, we're financially drained," she said. "We've maxed out all of our charge cards."

Cummings is scheduled to come home to Modesto on March 19. Cummings-Vinnedge isn't sure how she and her husband, Cummings' stepfather, will pay for the required home improvements needed to make the house accessible to her daughter.

And she's not sure how she will manage the around-the-clock care her daughter will need when Cummings-Vinnedge returns to work.

It's only been with the help of Big Valley Grace Community Church, her family and her co-workers that she's made it this far, she said.

"I hope I can do this by myself. I'm asking for help from my church and the community, if anybody wants to help pitch in," she said.

The Kassandra Cummings Fund has been set up at Farmers & Merchants Bank, 901 N. Carpenter Road, Suite 90, Modesto, 95351-1306. The bank can be reached at 577-8311.

Bee staff writer Emilie Raguso can be reached at eraguso@modbee.com or 578-2235.

This story was originally published March 3, 2008 at 2:29 AM with the headline "After crash and coma, teen finds voice."